Families push to change lax funeral home laws after numerous tragedies across the state

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - Colorado is the only state in the country without licensing for funeral home professionals, leading to numerous tragedies just in the last five years.

“We can do this,” Danielle McCarthy said as she walked up to her husband’s headstone in Fort Logan National Cemetery. Wood chips covered the two-month-old grave of Army Specialist David McCarthy, a decorated military veteran who died in 2017 of a massive heart attack.

McCarthy couldn’t bury her husband for more than six years because his body was locked in a room as FBI evidence. In November, she finally laid him to rest.

“He's at rest and he's where he said he wanted to be. We were finally able to keep that promise,” McCarthy said. “The five years, though, that he sat as evidence was extremely difficult.”

David McCarthy was a victim of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado. He was supposed to be cremated, but instead, the owners, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, sold his body parts for $1,500, Danielle said.

“The first 18 months, the nightmares never stopped,” she said. “Even talking about it now, the visions are still there. It's just a part of that trauma that maybe one of these days will go away.”

During a years-long investigation, the FBI found Hess and Koch mutilated and sold about 800 bodies from 2010 to 2018 when the agency raided their facility. David’s body was eventually recovered but remained FBI evidence for five years. Other victims were never found.

“It doesn't get any easier looking back,” McCarthy said. “Instead of feeling extremely grief-stricken and confused, I'm angry somebody would do this. The lack of dignity, the lack of respect, the lack of morality.” 

In January 2023, a judge sentenced Megan Hess to 20 years in prison and her mother Shirley Koch to 15 years, each for mail fraud. However, six years after one of the worst funeral home tragedies in the country, the industry in Colorado has barely changed.

“It's bad enough that it happened to my family,” McCarthy said. “Why is it still happening to other families? What is it going to take to stop this?”

Colorado deregulated the funeral home industry in 1982 when legislators failed to pass the sunset bill to allow the state to regulate the industry. For the last 40 years, the state hasn’t required funeral home owners, directors or embalmers to be licensed.

“The bad apples that couldn't get a license in another state or lost their license are now coming to Colorado,” said Republican State Representative Matt Soper. “Colorado is attracting the worst of the industry to come here.”

Soper was one of the legislators that helped pass laws following Sunset Mesa, including making abuse of a corpse a felony and not allowing funeral homes to turn away state investigators, something Soper said Hess did at least five times. 

However, Colorado remained the only state in the country that didn’t require licenses for funeral home professionals. Soper points to the most recent tragedy with Return to Nature as proof his legislation wasn’t enough.

“This only addresses one of the symptoms of the problem,” Soper said of his previous legislation. “It doesn't get to the heart of the problem. One thing to get to the heart of the problem is to require licensure of the individuals working in the industry.”   

A year, after the FBI raided Sunset Mesa, Jon and Carie Hallford, started storing bodies inside the Penrose funeral home. Shelia Canfield-Jones’s daughter, Marella, died in 2019 at 38-years-old, leaving behind a son. She was a former model and even acted in commercials when she was young. Return to Nature was supposed to cremate her, but instead, she was likely one of the first bodies stored in the Penrose facility.

"The thought of her being in a building for four years decaying is nightmarish," Canfield-Jones said.

When Canfield-Jones learned what the Hallfords did to her daughter’s body she channeled her grief into action. She emailed and called legislators across the state trying to find someone willing to change the industry. Her demands were simple: State licensing for all funeral home professionals, unannounced mandatory inspections, and a system to track bodies, from coroner to funeral home to crematory to cemetery.

"We license people who do our hair, we license doctors, we license nurses,” Canfield-Jones said. “If you go to a restaurant, they get inspections. Why don't we care enough about our loved ones that die as we do everything else?"

Colorado doesn’t have mandatory inspections of funeral homes. Instead, state investigators can only investigate a funeral home after a complaint is filed, whereas some other states require funeral home inspections at least twice a year.

Court records allege the Hallfords forged death certificates, listing crematories that never received bodies. KRDO13 Investigates found there is no law requiring the state to verify where someone is cremated or notify a crematory that they are listed on a death certificate. 

"We should have a way that someone can see that and cross-check that information to verify a cremation actually happened," Canfield-Jones said.

After numerous calls and emails, Canfield-Jones found two legislators who are drafting a bill to address regulation concerns in the funeral home industry — Soper and Democrat State Senator Dylan Roberts.

“We have a window of opportunity and that opportunity is because of cases like Return to Nature and Sunset Mesa,” Soper said. “It's giving us the momentum to be able to reform the industry.”

A recent case out of Denver just added fuel to the fire. On Feb. 16, police found a corpse and 30 cremated remains at a funeral director’s home. The suspect, Miles Harford, is wanted for abuse of a corpse, forgery, and theft. Some families say they are out thousands of dollars for prepaid cremation services.

"Where’s our money?” Tom Simpleman and Don Campbell said they would ask Harford after paying about $3,000 for prepaid cremations. “Why did you do this to people? Why did you do that to us?"

Soper and Roberts are expected to introduce their new bill in the coming days, but it’s unclear how far they will go to regulate the industry.

“What can we do that's relatively simple and easy and not going to bankrupt funeral homes? We don't want to do that because they'll just pass on the cost to the consumer,” Soper said.

Joe Walsh, the director of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, said he doesn’t think licensing funeral home professionals will prevent these tragedies from happening.

“Would a license have stopped that? A piece of paper is not going to change somebody's morals or ethics,” he said.

Soper said the government’s job is to protect the public. While he agrees regulation likely won’t stop tragedies, he said it will hopefully limit the number of victims.

“We have our duty as legislators to make sure that the public is going to be safe when they go to a funeral home and that they're not going to be taken advantage of,” Soper said. “They're not going to be scammed, defrauded, have their loved one's body stolen, or go through the pain of a second death.” 

“We're going to push regulation,” he continued. “We're not going to overregulate, but it's going to be appropriate regulation to protect the public.”

Six years after Sunset Mesa, McCarthy is experiencing deja vu — another funeral home tragedy, another push for legislation to change the industry. She just hopes this time will bring meaningful regulation.

“How many more families need to be impacted in Colorado,” she said, “before we finally take this seriously?”